Report of Food Poisonings
Puts the Public on Alert

A CLOUD LOOMS over July 4th picnics and barbecues after an outbreak of food-borne illness sickened about 5,000 guests at graduation parties around suburban Chicago.

The party crashers were bacteria from the E. coli family, a common gang of gastrointestinal thugs. But the outbreak involved a strain known more for triggering traveler's diarrhea than domestic distress: enterotoxigenic E. coli, or ETEC.